


we'll find our way back (if not home, than somewhere)

by RaisingCaiin



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Character Study, Family Feels, Gen, Memories, Reflection, Rivendell | Imladris, some RC headcanons about Gondolin sneaking into the background here whoops
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-21
Updated: 2020-10-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:55:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27136256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RaisingCaiin/pseuds/RaisingCaiin
Summary: Elrond finds Glorfindel in the gardens of Imladris, looking like he hasn't been able to sleep. He isn't quite sure if there is anything that he can do to help the legendary warrior, but Glorfindel seems to find his presence enough.
Relationships: Elrond Peredhel & Glorfindel
Comments: 4
Kudos: 32
Collections: Innumerable Stars 2020





	we'll find our way back (if not home, than somewhere)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SecretlyThranduil](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecretlyThranduil/gifts).



> Thank you, SecretlyThranduil, for your awesome prompts!

Elrond is awake before first light, slipping from his own quarters out into the gray but lightening halls of Imladris long before any but the cooks in the kitchen and the guards turning in after the night watch have risen. He returns their quiet greetings with salutations of his own and moves on, ignoring the whispers that continue to trail in his wake: _such a good lord, already so much like his father, no but so much like his mother. . ._

When he deems that he has walked far enough and he is alone once more, Elrond scrubs a hand across his aching eyes. They are at war, and his homely, half-built city has been designated a resting place for those who protect the broad moorlands and little foothills of Eriador—a refuge for the weary and a stronghold for the weak. The worthiest of causes, to Elrond's mind, and yet—because Imladris welcomes any who oppose the Shining Lord of Ost-in-Edhil, that means the city harbors ragtag survivors of many stripes: those who remember Maedhros Fëanorian as Elrond's father and those who remember Eärendil; those who remember Elwing Foamwhite as his mother, and those who think he lost an unnamed parent in the ongoing war. And on, and on, and on. . . 

It is a shame, Elrond thinks somewhat bitterly, that Imladris can never be a refuge for himself.

An unworthy thought, perhaps, but it remains at the forefront of his mind these days as the whispers follow him through his own halls. 

He walks on.

His tour of the Last Homely House, as Elrond's people have taken to calling the main structure within the valley, turns up nothing amiss. Their stores remain in the cellars where they have been placed; those who have assigned duties are fulfilling them. The Last Homely House hums with life as more of its people wake and greet a new day with the quiet, disbelieving joy of those who have a home and safe haven at last, and Elrond walks on.

In the end, his feet lead him out into the gardens—a grand name for this little plot of land tucked just outside the House itself. Today, its fertile soil is planted with herbs and small vegetables for the kitchens, though Elrond has heard Erestor fantasize about planting great beds of sweet-smelling flowers like those he used to love in Gondolin. _Someday, uncle_ , Elrond thinks fondly as he surveys the gardens, noting their rough wooden benches and haphazard rows of growing things—surely a far cry from the stately stone of Erestor's old beloved city, long since ground to dust and ash.

But homely as the gardens of Imladris yet are, it seems as if Erestor is not the only one who finds something familiar in them. For Elrond is not alone here, this morn—a quick sweep of the plots reveals a flowing golden mane, bright amidst the greens and browns.

There is only one Elda in all of Imladris with such a shining crown, and Elrond, sadly, has found him here before, shivering uncontrollably after a sleepless night spent wrestling with nightmares of falling from the walls of Gondolin or else the stresses of battle fatigue that belong to a body he no longer wears.

So Elrond steps into the gardens, clearing his throat quietly and letting his feet pick their way down the meandering rows of vegetables until he has reached the wooden bench where Glorfindel is seated.

The former lord's posture is hunched, so that Glorfindel is almost doubled in upon himself with his shoulders raised protectively, his arms clutched tight about his stern. His normally sharp grey eyes are glazed over, staring forward, as he focuses on something far away and visible only to himself, but his entire being snaps to attention with Elrond's polite cough, the soft crunch of soil and gravel beneath Elrond's approaching feet. And Elrond does not miss how the older elf's hand darts to his side, seeking the hilt of a knife or a sword that no longer hangs there through every hour of the day and night.

"Good morning," Elrond tells him quietly. Not because he is certain whether it _is_ a good morning for Glorfindel, and more that—what else is there to say?

He wishes Erestor were here, but the two survivors of Gondolin who currently live in Imladris are still assiduously avoiding one another, for the time being. Elrond has watched them sniffing out rumors of each other, as if afraid of seeing a familiar face and knowing all over again that their beloved former home is gone, but – there are things, he thinks sadly, that he cannot help Glorfindel with.

But what he can do, he will.

"May I?" he continues, gesturing to the other side of the bench. Glorfindel nods his permission, jerkily, and heaves his body further over so that Elrond has ample space beside him.

"Would it help to speak of it?" he asks, as gentle as he can be without patronizing the golden lord. 

"No," Glorfindel says hoarsely, speaking for the first time since Elrond found him here. "There is – there is nothing to say, my lord."

Elrond is sorely tempted to pinch the bridge of his own nose in quiet frustration. Though he may not whisper in the halls as so many other denizens of Imladris do, Glorfindel is another who persists in seeing the shadows of others in Elrond himself. He had known Eärendil as a child, and Eärendil's mother, fathers, before him, and he looks at Elrond as if Elrond is all those loved ones reincarnate before Glorfindel's eyes.

But, Elrond must remind himself, unlike the others who point and whisper, Glorfindel had known those whom he sees in Elrond. Had died protecting them from wrath and demon-fire.

And so he simply nods, letting the unneeded formality between them pass, in the hopes that the familiar title at least brings Glorfindel comfort. "Should that ever change, though, I hope you know that you will find a welcoming listener in me," he tells the other quietly.

Glorfindel nods again, the movement still jerky with nerves or lack of sleep, and they sit together in companionable quiet for several moments longer. Probably, Elrond thinks, this should be an uncomfortable sort of silence, one that stretches on for far longer than it ought to, but somehow, it is not. The shades that dance before Glorfindel's tired eyes seem to be held at bay when Elrond sits beside him, and the whispers at his back that so needle Elrond do not sting so badly when they come from one who is still a strange to him, but sees in him someone beloved.

"In the meantime," Elrond muses, eventually putting words out into the stillness of the early morning air and noting how Glorfindel turns toward him like a sunflower toward the sun. "If you have any stories of my father, I – I would be most glad to hear them." 

"Little scamp," Glorfindel says immediately, brightening somewhat, and Elrond pretends not to hear the hoarseness beneath the love still so clear and shining in the older elf's voice. However Glorfindel took his leave of young Eärendil on that fated day when Gondolin fell, that remains the golden lord's last memory of a person whom Beleriand, and now Middle-earth, remember very differently indeed. To the world, Eärendil was a hero; to Elrond, a father whom he barely remembers and was soon replaced by the eldest sons of Fëanor as the paternal figures of his life. But to Glorfindel –

"Always pestering us for sweets, or stories, or rides on our shoulders." Warmth returns to the former lord's voice, and life to his eyes, with every word; a weight seems to leave his shoulders and he straightens, almost unconsciously, his body unfurling into the brightening sunlight about them both. He is almost, almost smiling, as his memories of the past turn to something brighter, someone beloved, instead of lingering upon whatever dark precipice they had hung before.

"One day he wanted to be a sailor like his fathers, the next he wanted to be a princess like his mother," Glorfindel recounts with quiet gusto. "Then the day after that, nothing would do but that Ecthelion must teach him the flute so he could become a performer. And he was a troublemaker, yes, but weren't we all, in our own ways? It's not as if he couldn't rope even the lords of the city into his little schemes. And there was nothing in the world that he wouldn't tinker with, to try and make it better-"

Elrond is nodding, charmed despite himself at such a frank depiction of the man who sired him, when Glorfindel suddenly turns to him again, and Elrond is caught by the full force of eyes that have seen death, and whatever lies beyond it in the West, and returned to the eastern shores despite it all.

"I see some of that in you, you know," Glorfindel says, more serious now. "You have his warmth and his need to help those who are hurting."

This is – this is not where Elrond had expected Glorfindel's reminiscences to lead.

"I do?" It is an inane question, but Glorfindel does not seem to mind.

"You do," he repeats. "Whatever the High King might have said to you, I know that you did not have to remain here, after the siege; I know you were not required to erect an entire city and take its leadership upon yourself, or to accept and welcome every ragtag so-and-so who turns up on your doorstep with a sad story and a burning desire to fight that-" He spits out a word in Quenya so archaic that Elrond cannot follow it, but they both know all the same that Glorfindel refers to the Shining Lord of Ost-in-Edhil.

"Yet so you have, and so you do," Glorfindel continues quietly. "And you think nothing of pausing in your busy morning to come sit with an old soldier and listen to him ramble about places and people from long ago."

Before Elrond has realized what is happening, Glorfindel has reached out and is patting at his knee. From anyone else, the gesture might feel patronizing; from Glorfindel, Elrond realizes, this is the first time he has seen the former lord reach out to anyone, of his own volition, since he had arrived in Imladris, mud-spattered and wild-eyed as if he had walked here from the coast.

"I am glad you see so much of him in me," Elrond manages, somehow.

"Mmmm." With a final tap at his knee, Glorfindel's hand withdraws, and Elrond assumes this must be the end of it, except that:

"And that is to say nothing of all the qualities that must come from your mother," Glorfindel continues. "And your guardians, and the family you have gathered to yourself along the way, and those that are utterly your own. I only regret that I did not have the chance to meet you sooner, my lord, or them at all, but I am happy that I have been given this opportunity now."

Few besides Erestor speak of Elwing Foamwhite to Elrond's face; none dare speak of the sons of Fëanor. And yet, here is Glorfindel, who has known none of them, and he just, just –

Elrond finds that he has become the one who can only nod, lest words or emotions that he cannot predict tumble haphazard from his mouth when he opens it. But Glorfindel does not pressure him for more, only nods as if in acknowledgment that speech remains difficult, sometimes, and in companionable silence once more, together they watch the sun rise over the vegetables gardens of Imladris.


End file.
